Final Animation Updates!
The walk cycle rig is complete! I may go over and make more edits to it as I learn more on after effects but as of now, I’m really happy with the result!
There was a lot of trial and error with this project as I had to figure out what methods were not only best for the animation, but also more efficient.
Rigging
First, I did the basic After Effects rigging of just parenting all the limbs together and using rotation to make the figure move.
While this workflow worked, there were efficiency problems regarding having to move the other limbs. My first problem was having to be more particular about leg placement as the foot kept passing through the ground. My second problem regarded having to animate all the limbs the same. It became a matter of me having to copy over values from every keyframe to make the walk cycle look clean. Overall, this workflow was fine, but became rather tedious.
Puppet Animation
I was recommended to look at this Linkedin Learning course specifically for After Effects animation.
There’s a tutorial that talks about using the puppet tool to just move limbs in place rather than having to place, limbs only using rotation. I was excited to use this method as it looked really easy, but it wasn’t a method that worked for my design unfortunately.
The movement looked unnatural and would bend at joints. The puppet tools seems more suited to rubber hose style characters so I’d have to go back and find a way to make my original workflow better
Easier Rigging
One thing my supervisor brought up that could help my animation significantly was to just animate one leg and arms at a time and just duplicate the animation, offset it, and place it behind the body to replicate multiple limbs. This seemed a lot simpler. While there was a bit of a workaround to figure out offset the limbs to match up the animation, it turned out to be the most effective and still obtained a good quality in the animation
I had a lot of fun with this project and learning about different After Effects methods I can use in the future!